Another day of wheel building (and so on).
I built a wheel using ENVE's SES (Smart Envi System) 3.4 rim.
The "3.4" refers to the name of the set: a 35mm deep front rim with 20 holes and
a 45mm deep rear rim with 24 holes.
Since the rear rim isn't an offset rim and they're sold individually,
you're not strictly required to follow this pairing,
but the 35mm rim comes only in 20H and the 45mm only in 24H,
and the rim widths are different front and rear by design,
so it's safer to build them according to ENVE's intentions.
Smart Envi, compared to traditional Envi rims,
is supposedly the result of refining the rim's cross-section shape and width from an aerodynamic standpoint,
but I suspect aerodynamics is just the public-facing reason, and they were really spooked by buckling failures,
which is why they settled on this shape.
ZIPPS already did essentially the same thing with their Firecrest,
so frankly, this is just following suit.
Firecrest touts mainly aerodynamic benefits too, but neither ZIPPS nor ENVE
ever mention the elephant in the room: that rim weight increases significantly.
Traditional ENVE rims had an exceptional height-to-weight ratio
(for example, with the 1-45, there weren't many competitor rims around 45mm deep that were comparably light),
but as they got spooked by failure cases, they got progressively heavier over the years
(though I do respect that they honestly update their catalog specs),
so switching to a SES-focused lineup might be the smart move here.
Widening the rim to resist buckling isn't a trend unique to ENVE or ZIPPS,
so I'm not criticizing them.
It's just that dramatically reducing failure cases is a legitimate performance improvement,
and they've decided to weight that more heavily than the traditional metric.
It's quite a "boxy" rim.
By the way, this build is WO spec (clincher).
Front wheel: Evolite hub 20H, black CX-RAY, reverse radial spoking,
Rear wheel: Evolite hub 24H, black, semi-comp 3-cross lacing.
I'll finish the nipple threading later.
The valve hole cover is bonded extremely solidly.
The cover itself is also thicker and larger than the older versions.
This doesn't apply since it's a WO rim,
but with older rims, when you taped tubular tires
the cover could sometimes peel up when you removed the tape.
With the current model, that should rarely happen.
↑This is an ENVE 1-25, but
↑the cover came off.
In this case, the rim buckled right at the valve hole area
and the shock from the rim damage caused the cover to pop off—
it wasn't torn away by tape.
↑It must have looked something like this.
I built a wheel using ENVE's SES (Smart Envi System) 3.4 rim.
The "3.4" refers to the name of the set: a 35mm deep front rim with 20 holes and
a 45mm deep rear rim with 24 holes.
Since the rear rim isn't an offset rim and they're sold individually,
you're not strictly required to follow this pairing,
but the 35mm rim comes only in 20H and the 45mm only in 24H,
and the rim widths are different front and rear by design,
so it's safer to build them according to ENVE's intentions.
Smart Envi, compared to traditional Envi rims,
is supposedly the result of refining the rim's cross-section shape and width from an aerodynamic standpoint,
but I suspect aerodynamics is just the public-facing reason, and they were really spooked by buckling failures,
which is why they settled on this shape.
ZIPPS already did essentially the same thing with their Firecrest,
so frankly, this is just following suit.
Firecrest touts mainly aerodynamic benefits too, but neither ZIPPS nor ENVE
ever mention the elephant in the room: that rim weight increases significantly.
Traditional ENVE rims had an exceptional height-to-weight ratio
(for example, with the 1-45, there weren't many competitor rims around 45mm deep that were comparably light),
but as they got spooked by failure cases, they got progressively heavier over the years
(though I do respect that they honestly update their catalog specs),
so switching to a SES-focused lineup might be the smart move here.
Widening the rim to resist buckling isn't a trend unique to ENVE or ZIPPS,
so I'm not criticizing them.
It's just that dramatically reducing failure cases is a legitimate performance improvement,
and they've decided to weight that more heavily than the traditional metric.
It's quite a "boxy" rim.
By the way, this build is WO spec (clincher).
Front wheel: Evolite hub 20H, black CX-RAY, reverse radial spoking,
Rear wheel: Evolite hub 24H, black, semi-comp 3-cross lacing.
I'll finish the nipple threading later.
The valve hole cover is bonded extremely solidly.
The cover itself is also thicker and larger than the older versions.
This doesn't apply since it's a WO rim,
but with older rims, when you taped tubular tires
the cover could sometimes peel up when you removed the tape.
With the current model, that should rarely happen.
↑This is an ENVE 1-25, but
↑the cover came off.
In this case, the rim buckled right at the valve hole area
and the shock from the rim damage caused the cover to pop off—
it wasn't torn away by tape.
↑It must have looked something like this.